Down is Up
Kundalini does not necessary move “up” the body, for it is all happening in
the brain...and “felt” in the body as a consequence. The brain and body are one.
The sensations and chemistry occurring in the body is also reflected in the brain
and vice versa. One of the physical symptoms of kundalini—the double helix of
energy up the spine—has been stigmatized in myth as the serpent symbol. It is
unfortunate for this gets mixed up with the symbol of the biblical serpent and
then kundalini is relegated to the mere physical realm. In an ignorant and fearful
culture, kundalini is then something that is superstitiously desacralized. However
kundalini IS the sacred energy itself, that expands and deepens everything physical,
emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual. It cannot be relegated anyone domain
because it inhabits all domains. Kundalini is no different than Spirit.
The way Eastern language treats kundalini adds to the general mystification of
the process. Sanskrit is a metaphorical prescientific language, that often confuses
more than it illuminates. There are no “snakes” in kundalini, no coiled thing.
There is no such thing as Nadis...the energy fields are just that—fields, not discrete
lines of force. The ida and pingala can be seen as the left and right sympathetic
trunks that run either side of the spine. Sometimes a special event can occur where
energy can be felt to spiral around in a double helix from ganglion to ganglion
around the spine and up the sympathetic trunks—giving the sensation of two
entwined coiled snakes. We no longer need to use mythic snake metaphors or
imagine mysterious forces for which there is no scientific correlate. Many earnest
people get rather knotted up about kundalini and are apt to insist that spiritual
practice is the be-all-and-end-all of spirituality, without considering the role of
Spirit in the process. It’s Spirit that spiritualizes after all. Spirit shows us the way
from the inside out, at such speed, it’s all one can do to try and get out the way in
order to cope, adapt and live up to the demands of the alchemy.
Don’t believe anyone that tells you awakening is a linear path—all laid out
with pretty chakra lights to lead the way—follow the colors and you will get to
heaven, Shambhala or enlightenment. Reality is far different from this. Kundalini
flows up in order to flow down and down in order to flow up. One way of looking
at metamorphosis is the dance of two intertwined opposing forces of charges,
poles, sexes and hemispheres. At the central nervous system level the yang force
is the sympathetic on-switch, and the yin force is the parasympathetic off-switch.
Kundalini we could say is the rhythmic dance of these two forces taking us on a
hyperbolic tango up and down. If we don’t know how to flow-with this polar dance,
we resist both the up and the down, resulting in the burnout of both sides of the
nervous system and we succumb to listlessness, depression and meaninglessness.
I don’t follow the chakra system except in abstract theory, as a symbolic
metaphysical map of the phylogenic and ontogenic development of consciousness.
In reality kundalini operates simultaneously in all charkas to varying degrees. To
open up more of the higher areas the lower areas are simultaneously opened. In
order to open the lower areas, the higher areas are simultaneously opened. As we
evolve, the belly, solar plexus and pelvis become increasingly relaxed, more sensate